Yesterday WAS the Day

Cubby seemed to be fine yesterday. He had a good day (well, except for when he got into the cats' litter box right before bed, but we won't talk about that because OH GROSS) and took two good naps. Which means I had not one, but two opportunities to get things done. WHEEE!!!

Nap one: I gathered the trash so A. could make the dump run. He has to do it by himself now that Cubby requires a constant caretaker and the pick-up truck is not exactly child seat friendly. After the dump, A. was going to the butcher to pick up the cow we got from his uncle before he left for Belize. This meant that the new (except pretty old, actually) freezer in the Pit of Despair needed to be cleaned out and the old freezer in the shop needed to be assessed and organized. So, into the shop to take stock of the contents of that freezer (contents: NO ONE could possibly use that much suet, YIKES) and re-arrange what was left in there more neatly, and then into the Pit with bleach and rags to scrub out that freezer. This required many trips up and down the stairs with hot water and towels for drying and so forth, but eventually it was all clean and ready to receive a dead cow.

A lovely visual, I know.

Cubby woke up right before A. got home, so we all went outside together to deal with the meat. Well, Cubby didn't so much deal with the meat as wander around and play in the mud. But he did keep himself entertained while A. hauled boxes and I divvied the meat up and labeled everything.

Because we got a whole cow this time instead of a half, we had fifteen boxes of cow parts total. But a quarter of that was going to A.'s sister, which meant I needed to divide everything in the boxes. So we just put all the boxes on the driveway and I dove in, dealing out sirloin steaks and stew meat as fast as possible so it wouldn't all melt in the surprisingly strong sun.

Nap two: Tomatoes! I only bought two new packages of tomato seeds this year, but I had four packages that were two years old and really needed to be used. So just to use them all up I, uh, planted far too many seeds. I'm anticipating that the old seeds won't germinate as well. At least, I'm kind of hoping they won't germinate as well, because otherwise we're going to have WAY too many tomato seedlings.

The only new variety this year is Caspian Pink, which the MiL specifically requested. I've never had that variety, so I have no idea what it's like, but the other five varieties are all known entities. There will, of course, be Stupice, because they're the early tomato and The First Tomato is always the best tomato. Also Baby Cakes, because they are delicious and now that I know what to do with them (juice! so good for cooking!), I can handle their crazy production. Then there's the Black Krims, which are a really weird color but OH YUM. And the Primetimes and Jet Stars, which are kind of boring standard hybrids, but I had the seeds so I planted them.

Now, assuming these seeds germinate and the plants grow and I don't fry them in the cold frame and I transplant them successfully and don't almost kill them with over-enthusiastic mulching, we will have a LOT of tomatoes.

Tomatoes and beef. What more does anyone need?